(Minghui.org) A 32-year-old man has been subjected to constant torture since he was imprisoned in late 2018 for his faith in Falun Gong. Mr. Zhang Shude’s parents haven’t had any update about him in the last three months and are very worried about him.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Zhang Shude
Mr. Zhang, a native of Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, earned a master’s degree from Harbin Technological University in 2014. He then landed a job at the Dalian City Science and Technology Design Institute in Liaoning Province. His employer later relocated him to nearby Panjin City in the same province.
When he went to the police station in Panjin to have his temporary residence permit renewed on June 26, 2017, he answered in the affirmative when asked if he practiced Falun Gong. The police refused to process his application and arrested him three days later. He was tried in the Xinglong District Court on January 16, 2018, and sentenced to seven years on February 8.
Mr. Zhang was admitted to the 7th ward of Dongling Prison in Shenyang City on December 27, 2018. When he expressed his desire to do the Falun Gong exercises on January 4, 2019, two guards and an inmate beat him until they were exhausted. Mr. Zhang’s nose bled and he had bruises all over.
The guards put Mr. Zhang on strict management and refused let him take showers or buy extra food when they didn’t feed him enough. Because the guards ignored him when he complained about the lack of food, he started a hunger strike on April 16 in protest.
The prison doctor force-fed Mr. Zhang on April 22 but he kept vomiting. The guards made another attempt to force-feed Mr. Zhang on April 24 but failed again. He also became incontinent. The guards promised that they would stop forcing him to renounce Falun Gong if he stopped the hunger strike. Mr. Zhang thus began to eat again.
Mr. Zhang was transferred to the 5th ward on June 10. Because he refused to do the forced labor, the guards handcuffed him, shocked him with electric batons, and beat him, including slapping him on his head and ears with their shoes. The torture lasted over two hours until the three electric batons all ran out of power. Mr. Zhang was forced to work afterward.
Torture reenactment: Electric shocks
Due to prolonged pain in his ears, Mr. Zhang requested medical intervention on July 12, 2019. The guards responded by shocking him with three electric batons at the same time.
Torture illustration: Cuffed to a bed
Beginning in September 2021, the prison intensified the torture of Falun Gong practitioners. The guards arranged for two inmates to watch Mr. Zhang around the clock. He was forced to sit on a small stool without moving for long hours during the day. He wasn’t allowed to close his eyes for a second. At night, the guards cuffed Mr. Zhang to the bed to keep him from doing the Falun Gong exercises. They also accused him of disrupting prison order when he demanded to do the exercises.
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